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leaves, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until fragrant, about 5 minutes.

    2. Remove and discard lemongrass and lime leaves and increase heat to high. Stir in mushrooms and chile paste, to taste, and boil for 1 minute; add shrimp and fish sauce and cook until shrimp are just cooked through, about 45 seconds. Combine remaining lime leaves with chiles, scallions, and lime juice in a serving bowl or tureen. Ladle soup into serving bowl, stir, and serve immediately, with rice, if you like.

Big World
    For my 13th-birthday dinner, my parents and I drove from our home in Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Boston to eat at a popular Thai restaurant called the King and I. This was a big deal. We didn’t go to Boston often and we’d never eaten Thai food. In small-town Massachusetts at that time, the brick oven pizzeria was as urbane as it got. The place was bright and loud and packed. The waiter came over and we each ordered pad Thai—the noodles were enough like pasta to assuage my father, who would rather have been at a red-sauce joint—plus a bowl of tom yum soup for me, which I chose because it included shrimp. The soup arrived first, a brown crock of cloudy broth with a few mushrooms, a sprig of cilantro, flecks of chopped something (lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaf, I would later learn), and just one pink shrimp. No matter; it was the broth that floored me. It had an unfamiliar sourness that was round and sweet, but it also had an intriguing fishy flavor and a beautiful citrusy fragrance. Then the pad Thai arrived, a heap of rice noodles tangled with stir-fried egg and scallion, sprinkled with peanuts, all of it strange to me and addictive. I remember looking around to see how the other diners used chopsticks, and then back at my quiet family who twirled our noodles around forks. After that meal, I’d sit in algebra class and dream of tom yum, the memory of its tartness making my mouth water. I’d spend weekends making pad Thai for my friends, once I realized that the “international foods” section of the Stop & Shop carried fish sauce. That soup made me lust for places like New York City, where surely everyone ate things like Thai food every night. And when I finally moved there—and realized that they didn’t—I felt at home anyway.
    —Sarah DiGregorio

Tuscan-Style Kale Soup
    Ribollita
    The Italian name for this soup—ribollita, which literally means reboiled—reveals its very practical origins as a way to use leftover vegetables and day-old bread. Long simmering renders the beans tender and the kale silky; hunks of rustic bread all but disappear, thickening the broth to a stewlike consistency. Flavorful and sustaining, the sum of these humble parts is a masterpiece of Tuscan peasant cooking.
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus 3 tbsp. for serving
    ½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
    6 ribs celery, chopped
    4 cloves garlic, chopped
    3 medium carrots, chopped
    1 small red onion, chopped Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
    1 28-oz. can whole peeled tomatoes, undrained
    2 lbs. trimmed and roughly chopped kale or cavolo nero (see Cooking Note)
    3 14-oz. cans borlotti or cannellini beans, drained
    1 ¾ -lb. loaf stale ciabatta bread, trimmed of crust and torn into 1-inch pieces
    Serves 8–10
    1. Heat ¼ cup oil in an 8-qt. pot over medium-high heat. Add the parsley, celery, garlic, carrots, and onion and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are golden brown, 15–20 minutes.
    2. Put the tomatoes into a medium bowl. Crush the tomatoes by hand and transfer to the pot along with the juices. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until thickened, 25–30 minutes. Add the kale, 2 cans of beans, and 16 cups water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer, uncovered, until the kale is tender, about 30 minutes.
    3. Meanwhile, purée the remaining can of beans and ½ cup of water in a blender. Stir into the pot. Add the bread pieces and remaining oil. Cook,